Hong Kong has weathered the worst of Super Typhoon Ragasa, which is moving away from the financial hub and is set to cross China’s southern coast later Wednesday, where it’s expected to dump torrential rain.
Ragasa has killed at least 15 people in a rural area of southeastern Taiwan, with rescuers now trying to find 17 others who are still missing.
The storm was packing top sustained winds of 175 kilometers (109 miles) per hour as of 3 p.m. local time, according to the weather bureau. The system has weakened slightly and is now a severe typhoon, but is still equivalent to an extremely dangerous Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
Ragasa is the most powerful cyclone worldwide this year, lashing Hong Kong with heavy rain and fierce winds that toppled trees and damaged infrastructure across the city. The typhoon has led to thousands of flights being canceled, and school classes and train services suspended in southern Chinese cities.
On its current track, Ragasa will make landfall near Yangjiang city in China’s southern Guangdong province. The storm is then expected to skirt the country’s coast over the next day, bringing heavy rains to nearly a dozen provinces and threatening riverine flooding as it tracks west toward Vietnam.
Given its size and intensity, comparisons were made between Ragasa and the destructive typhoon Mangkhut in September 2018, but several factors helped cushion the financial hub from the worst of the damage, according to Chi-ming Shum, a former director of the Hong Kong Observatory.
The city was largely affected by Ragasa’s outer eye wall, which might have been less powerful than the storm’s inner wall that was further away, Shum said. By contrast, at Mangkhut’s closest, the inner eye wall had become disorganized and the outer eye wall was particularly powerful.
Howling winds started to rip through Hong Kong early Wednesday morning, along with pelting rains. Bankers and traders hunkered down for a day of work in living rooms and hotels after the city ended its decades-long practice of shutting markets during severe tropical storms last year.
The region’s five busiest airports — Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Macau and Zhuhai — have seen more than 5,000 flights canceled across Tuesday and Wednesday, according to data compiled by Webb-site.com and VariFlight. Shenzhen has also suspended citywide metro services.
Hong Kong’s weather bureau issued its highest storm warning overnight, known as signal No. 10, which indicates hurricane-force winds. The alert was downgraded to a signal No. 8 at 1:20 p.m. local time today.
Since 1946, 19 typhoons — including Ragasa — have prompted a signal No. 10. Prior to the current warning, the last tropical storm to prompt a so-called T10 was Wipha in July. It’s the first time in six decades that the weather agency has raised its highest cyclone alert twice in a calendar year.
As a densely packed coastal city, Hong Kong faces the triple challenge of torrential downpours, sharp terrain, and storm surges that can cause widespread coastal flooding. Both the public and private sectors have improved their extreme weather response measures in recent years.
Neighboring Macau issued its top storm warning signal at dawn on Wednesday, and the local weather bureau said the risk of flooding in low-lying areas will remain through at least the evening.
The typhoon has already left a trail of destruction, killing at least 14 people in a rural area of southeastern Taiwan, with more than 100 still missing. In the Philippines, at least six people have died.
Meanwhile, the warm waters of the tropical Pacific remain active. The Philippines is monitoring another storm, known locally as Opong, in the seas to its east. It’s forecast to strengthen into a severe tropical storm and track over Manila by the weekend, according to the national weather bureau.
Copyright 2025 Bloomberg.
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